Thursday, June 09, 2005

It's Thursday but I really wouldn't know it. I have lost all concept of time. Living in Vegas does that to you. Did I happen to mention that I'm positive that I have a drug dealer and a hooker living a few doors down? I wonder if I can get a package deal?

I also have a white trash family of 18 living in a one bedroom apartment next door to me. Every morning at 10am is "Red Neck Family Hour" in my complex, which is complete with drunken arguments, a slap fight, and several malnourished kids running rampant in front of my window. Yeah, my apartment is in a flavorful place. I have this freaky feeling that someone's homemade meth lab in the adjacent building unit is going to blow up and all my WSOP notes will be destroyed.

But enough about me...

The first Seven-card Stud event of this year's WSOP begins today. The buy in is $1500 and there are 473 players registered. The prize pool is over $651,360. I suspected that my friend Felicia Lee would be playing, but she was not feeling well enough to grind it out in a tournament. I hope that her health improves soon! She said she'll wait until next weekend to take all of Ted Forrest's money. Ted won the event last year.

Event #7 the $1000 NL with Rebuys continues today as well. Last night they played down to 43 players. 826 originally signed up to play on Tuesday. The prize pool is a monster $2.2 million with $1.4 million in rebuys! Yes, there were 1495 rebuys and all but seven of them were from Daniel Negreanu. OK, that's a bad joke. Daniel actually had 10 rebuys and 2 add-ons yesterday. Poor Daniel. He bubbled out! Here's the chip count (courtesy of Poker Wire) as the players sat down for Day 2:

3:29pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: David Williams was the first player to be knocked out today. He came in 34th place when he flopped an ace with A6. He was outkicked by Ram Vaswami's Mrs. Slick. Annie Duke's AJ lost to Big Slick and she was eliminated in 32nd place. I thought she had a shot yesterday when I looked over and saw she had a nice sized stack.

3:50pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: Phil "Tilt Boy" Gordon doubled up with pocket tens against Hoyt Corkins. CT Law is looking strong. He knocked out two or three players already today and has amassed almost $300K in chips by the break.

4:00pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: The big stack has been doubling up little stacks. CT Law doubled up Eli Elezra, Marco Traniello, and Anthony Cousineau. CT Law pissed away at least $100K in three hands.

4:10pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: Hoyt Corkins is knocked out in 22nd place. Ram Vaswani had a tough time with the Hilton Sisters. He lost to a weak ace and on the very next hand was knocked out in 21st. Barry Greenstein was knocked out in 20th place when he ran into quads!

4:20pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: Chau Giang is looking strong with over $4K in chips. There are 275 players left.

5:20pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: We're down to 183 players. Chris Grigorian is the chipleader with about 12K in chips. Last year's bracelet winner Ted Forrest has about 5K in chips.

5:36pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: We are down to two tables. 13 players remain. CT Law regained the chiplead. Robert Mizrachi was just knocked out. One of my fellow writers covering the event mentioned to me just now that, "We are enterianment writer hacks. We are at the bottom of the food chain."

4:59pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: Jeff Duvall busted out... Currently, CT Law is the chipleader with $650K. Phil Gordon has about $125K remaining. The players took a 15 minute break to color up.

5:25pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: Max Pescatori is in the chip lead with $9K.

5:30pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: Phil Ivey was knocked out. I overheard on the speaker, "Secruity on Table 118! Security on Table 118!" Here's what Jen from Poker Wire had to say about the incident. She was standing nearby when it happened:

"David Levi was in a hand when his opponent stuck his thumb up to indicate a raise. He then proceeded to make a string bet. Levi asked what the thumb ment, saying that where's he's from it means the same as flashing the middle finger. His opponent then indicated that the middle finger means the f-word, and both players repeated the word several times. Both Levi and his opponent got a 10-minute time out.

Then, much to everyone's astonishment, Syracuse Chris Tsiprailidis got up from the table to confront the opponent and he ended up in a full-on confrontation with Paul Darden who was between the opponent and Syracuse Chris. The floorman called security and Darden's buddy Cody calmed him down. Syracuse Chris left the room."

Syracuse Chris even asked Paul Darden to "step outside" into the hallway to settle their differences. He declined. It's never a dull day at the WSOP with F-bombs and multiple obscene finger gestures.

6:50pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: All remaining players are on a break. Jesus, Erik Seidel, The Grinder, and Daniel Negreanu are still alive.

6:55pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: Chuck Thompson is on fire. First, he eliminated Tony Cousineau. Chuck had AA and Tony showed AKs. Tony flopped a royal flush draw. His hand did not improve and he was out in 12th place. Then Chuck T knocked out Nam Le. His Hilton Sisters held up against Le's Big Slick. Le took 11th place.

7:01pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: There are ten players left and they redrew for seat assignments. They will play down to 9 and then break until tomorrow. The final table will be televised by ESPN. Here are the seat assignments:

7:19pm PCT... NL Rebuy Day 2 update: CT Law just knocked out Eli Elezra. Eli moved all in with 88. CT Law only had to call a llittle more and did so with 10-9. He flopped a ten and Eli's hand did not improve. Eli won $24,220 for his efforts. Chuck Thompson is the chipleader with $544K. Meng La is the shortstack with $71K. Action for the NL w/ Rebuys is over for today and will resume at 2pm on Friday.

8:15pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: The players are back from their dinner break. When I was covering the NL rebuy event, I sat down at an empty poker table right next to the two final tables. The table behind me had Ted Forrest seated there. Felicia was IMing me asking me for Ted's chip count and to cheer him on. Then my battery on my laptop went low so I had to run back over to "press row" to charge up. I had to sprint back and forth to blog and take notes on the final table. Now that it's over for tonight, I'm back in press row. From my seat I can see Daniel Negreanu and Jesus Ferguson playing in the Stud event.

8:30pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: I wandered over to Max Pescatori's table. Chip Jett was sitting there. Max was heads up with some guy. Max showed: xx/As-Ks-9s-8h. The other guy had just a King and Jack high showing. It was a huge pot and Max bet $600 on sixth street. His opponent mucked and he took down a big pot.

11:57pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: 48 players left Chau Giang was crippled when he lost a monster pot to Jesus Ferguson. Lots of big names have been eliminated; Ted Forrest, Daniel Negranu, David Sklansky, Huck Seed, The Grinder, Paul Darden, and Tom McEvoy. Abe Almahi has been on a role and held the chiplead for a while.

11:59pm PCT... Seven-card Stud update: John Juanda is out. Also there was an interesting hand involving a cellphone. I knew an incident like this was bound to happen. The hand in question involved John Phan heads up with some guy who I don't his exact name. Phan moved all in with a 9 for his door card. After he pushed all his chips in, his cell phone rang. He answered and the floorman declared that his hand was dead. He violated a rule. However, all of his money was in the pot, therefore the phone call could not affect his decision... since there was none to be made. Phan offered to allow his hand to be declared dead. The tournament directors decided that Phan's hand is good. Phan's opponent wasn't thrilled with the ruling and implied that there could be a bigger controversy brewing if he loses the hand to Phan. In the end, Phan's two pair loses to a higher two pair. Controversy averted. WSOP Lesson of the Day: Turn off your cellphones.

3:20am PCT... Seven-card Stud update: Max Pescatori is out in 25th. He wins $2,650. Max is a good guy. He gave me some tips. I met him once last December and he remembered my name when I came by to sweat him for a while earlier in the day. I'm trying to be impartial, but shit... I was rooting for Max to win a bracelet this year! He's really a good guy. Visit his blog. Jesus Ferguson was eliminated as well in 31st place.

4:20am PCT... Seven-cad Stud update... We're down to 20 and the players willr esume play at 3pm on Friday. Here are the chip counts courtesy of Poker Wire. Their staff is pretty cool and by far my favorite people that I've met in the last few days.